The maintenance of human amniotic membranes in culture

A culture systems is described for the long-term maintenance of human amnion in vitro. This has been developed because of the need for an amnion organ culture to study immunological aspects of this extra-embryonic membrane as well as the increasing surgical use of amnion in wound healing. The intact amnion can be maintained for 2-3 weeks with 50-90% viability as determined by morphological and trypan-blue extraction techniques. This puts forward the feasability of developing an amnion bank for clinical investigations of wound healing as well as the possibility of in vitro studies of this membrane in the materno-fetal relationship in human pregnancy.